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Message: [QUOTE="orange79, post: 2692646, member: 159"] [I]In 2014, Delany shocked the world by adding Maryland and Rutgers to the conference. It was a blatant play for cable-connected televisions in Washington D.C. and New York City, and nothing more. Maryland athletics was saddled with crippling debt that Big Ten lucre could fix; Rutgers was essentially a mid-major program. Neither had a football program with any sort of history; Maryland had won a single ACC championship since 1985, and Rutgers had long since lost program savior Greg Schiano to the NFL, quickly falling back into the lower tiers of mediocrity. ... Rutgers, which is on its second football coach and second athletic director in less than five years since joining the Big Ten, lost by 41 to Kansas. Let's try that again. THEY LOST TO KANSAS BY 41 POINTS. KANSAS.[/I] [I]After posting a respectable 7-5 record in their first season in the Big Ten (albeit with a 3-5 in-conference record), Rutgers has failed to win more than four games in the last three seasons and looks dead-set on making it four in a row. The Scarlet Knights are now 7-28 in Big Ten games, after getting obliterated by Ohio State in the season's second week. Their previous coach was fired for trying to coerce better grades for his players from university professors, and the prior athletic director was fired for that and a couple of other scandals. Rutgers hasn't really been competitive in any sport since joining the conference. ... So let's get divorced. Nebraska would still be a prime property for the Big 12, especially now that the conference's finances have stabilized and Texas's control of everything has been moderated by the Longhorn Network's limited success. The Cornhuskers would have access to Texas recruits again, the games against Oklahoma their fans so desperately want, and improvement in the sports (baseball in particular) where they used to excel and have now collapsed. Like Nebraska, Maryland could likely return to the ACC as part of the sixteen-team league that they have repeatedly suggested as their endgame. The Big Ten can buy out the Terps with enough money to pay off that pesky debt and operate in the black going forward, in exchange for the privilege of never having the Big Ten basketball tournament set foot in Washington D.C. again. Rutgers would be hurt, not only because they got such a gargantuan upgrade from the AAC when they were picked, but because they don't really have a landing area. Perhaps the Big 12 would take them as a partner to West Virginia, or the ACC as the sixteenth team (although, frankly, UConn makes more sense for a conference that already has Syracuse and Boston College). Maybe Rutgers just accepts its fate and stops playing sports altogether. They never should have been B1G to begin with, and I don't much care what happens to them going forward.[/I] It will never happen, but I credit the Iowa site with trying. I agree with everything posted about Rutgers. Losers. [/QUOTE]

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